The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#14501
Martin Ruhnke
#110916
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
Martin Ruhnke was a German musicologist. His main areas of research were the music theory of early baroque music, Italian baroque opera and the life and work of Georg Philipp Telemann. Life Born in Koszalin, Ruhnke was appointed in Kiel where he gained his doctorate in 1954 with a thesis on Joachim Burmeister's music theory. Afterwards he was Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the Free University of Berlin and habilitatetd in 1961. In 1964 he was appointed to the chair of musicology at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, which he held until he became emeritus in 1986.
Go to Profile#14502
Allvar Gullstrand
1862 - 1930 (68 years)
Allvar Gullstrand was a Swedish ophthalmologist and optician. Life Born at Landskrona, Sweden, Gullstrand was professor successively of eye therapy and of optics at the University of Uppsala. He applied the methods of physical mathematics to the study of optical images and of the refraction of light in the eye. For this work, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1911.
Go to Profile#14503
Carlos Aldunate Lyon
#91702
Overall Influence
1916 - 2018 (102 years)
Carlos Aldunate Lyon was a Chilean Catholic Jesuit priest, teacher, writer, and promoter of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Chile, as well as one of the teachers of Pope Francis. Biography He was the son of Carlos Aldunate Errázuriz and Adriana Lyon Lynch; He was the grandson of the president of the Chilean Conservative Party, Carlos Aldunate Solar, and brother of the Jesuit priest José Aldunate. He studied in Jesuit schools in England and Chile. He entered the Society of Jesus in the city of Chillán and was ordained a priest in Argentina in 1944. In 1948 he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy...
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Bojan Accetto
#69712
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Bojan Accetto was a Slovenian physician, the founder of gerontology in Slovenia. He was a professor of internal medicine nd of social gerontology at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. He established the institute for gerontology and geriatry. He explored the solidification of blood and thrombosis. He wrote "Starost in staranje" - 1986. For his efforts, he received the Kidrič prize in 1958. His son, Rok Accetto, is a Slovenian cardiologist.
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Marc Lamont Hill
#66617
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Marc Lamont Hill is an American academic, author, activist, and television personality. He is a professor of urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Hill is the host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English, VH1 Live! on VH1, and Basketball Wives reunion shows. He is also a BET News correspondent. Previously he was the first host of the syndicated television show Our World with Black Enterprise, the host of HuffPost Live, and a political commentator for CNN and Fox News. In November 2018, Hill was fired from his position at CNN after remarks before the United Nations on the Isra...
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Jose Acacio de Barros
#75124
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
José Acacio de Barros is a Brazilian-American physicist and philosopher with contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology, and quantum cognition. Dr. de Barros received his PhD in Physics from the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas in 1991 under the supervision of Francisco Antonio Doria and Antonio Fernandes da Fonseca Teixeira . Since 2007 he has been in the Liberal Studies faculty of San Francisco State University. Before going to San Francisco, he was an associate professor of physics at the Federal University at Juiz de Fora, Brazil, and he was a visiting...
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Joscelyn Godwin
#82287
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Joscelyn Godwin is a composer, musicologist, and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism, and music in the occult. Biography He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College , and Magdalene College, Cambridge .
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Jean-Paul Audet
#127476
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
Jean-Paul Audet, was a French Canadian academic and philosopher. He was a professor and former head of the Université de Montréal's Department of Philosophy. In 1988, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "contribution to the field of theology". In 1969, he was awarded the Molson Prize. In 1970, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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Rinchen Zangpo
958 - 1055 (97 years)
Lochen Rinchen Zangpo , also known as Mahaguru, was a principal lotsawa or translator of Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Tibetan during the second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet, variously called the New Translation School, New Mantra School or New Tantra Tradition School. He was a student of the famous Indian master, Atisha. His associates included Legpai Sherab. Zangpo's disciple Guge Kyithangpa Yeshepal wrote Zangpo's biography. He is said to have built over one hundred monasteries in Western Tibet, including the famous Tabo Monastery in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, Poo in Kinnaur and Rinchenli...
Go to Profile#14510
Georg Otho
1634 - 1713 (79 years)
Georg Otho was a German orientalist, who was born at Sattenhausen, near Cassel. He became professor and librarian at the University of Marburg, and died in that city. Besides a large number of academical discourses, and Latin essays on various points of philosophy and of Biblical exegesis, he wrote, Oratio funebris in obitum Justi Jungmannii : De accentuatione textus Hebraici : Synopsis institutionum Samaritanarum, Rabbinicarum, Arabicarum, Ethiopicarum, et Persicarum, ex. optimis autoribus excerpta Francf. 1701, 8voibid. 1702, 4toMarb. 1692, 4to
Go to Profile#14511
James C. Risser
#150326
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Conrad Risser is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He was Pigott-McCone Endowed Chair of Humanities between 1991 and 1994 and the president of the North American Society of Philosophical Hermeneutics .
Go to Profile#14512
Jörn Peter Hiekel
#120672
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jörn Peter Hiekel is a German musicologist. Life Born in Göttingen, Hiekel first studied musicology, art history and history at the universities of Cologne and Bonn before he completed his double bass studies at the Musikhochschule Köln. Afterwards he received his doctorate at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
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Bjarne Bogen
#120609
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bjarne Bogen is a Norwegian immunologist, inventor and physician. He is widely known for his research on DNA vaccines, autoimmune disorders and cancer immunology. Career Bogen graduated with a medical degree from the University of Oslo in 1977. In the following two years, he completed his internship at Sandnessjøen hospital and in the municipalities of Lurøy and Træna at the coastline of northern Norway. In 1984, at the University of Tromsø he defended his PhD thesis entitled "Murine Th and B Lymphocyte Recognition of Isologous Immunoglobulin".
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Thomas Hollis
1720 - 1774 (54 years)
Thomas Hollis FRS FRSA was an English political philosopher and author. Early life Hollis was educated at Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, until the age 10, and then in St. Albans until 15, before learning French, Dutch and accountancy in Amsterdam. After the death of his father in 1735, his guardian was a John Hollister. He was trained in this time in public service by John Ward of Gresham College, London. He took Chambers with Lincoln's Inn from 1740 to 1748, though without ever reading law. By this time he was a man of considerable wealth having inherited from his father, grand...
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Gary Wand
#155803
Overall Influence
Gary S. Wand is an American physician and an Alfredo Rivière and Norma Rodriguez de Rivière professor who specializes in endocrinology and metabolism. He is a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine laboratory director, focusing on neuropsychoendocrinology. He is also Director of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Fellowship Program.
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Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney
1757 - 1820 (63 years)
Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney was a French philosopher, abolitionist, writer, orientalist, and politician. He was at first surnamed Boisgirais after his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney .
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Frank H. Wadsworth
#74527
Overall Influence
1915 - 2022 (107 years)
Frank Howard Wadsworth was an American forester, conservationist and researcher. He made important scientific contributions to forestry, through his work in Puerto Rico where he lived from 1942 until his death.
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Vincent Watts
#35730
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Vincent Challacombe Watts OBE is a British academic and businessman. He was educated at Sidcot School, Peterhouse, Cambridge , and at the University of Birmingham . He served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia from 1997 to 2002, leaving to focus full-time on his role as Chairman of the East of England Development Agency. Prior to joining the University of East Anglia he was at Andersen Consulting.
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John O'Shea
#51335
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John O'Shea is founder and former CEO of GOAL, an Irish non-governmental organization devoted to assisting the poorest of the poor. His first career was as a sports journalist and GOAL retains links to the sporting community, especially in Ireland.
Go to Profile#14520
Gail G. Shapiro
#74350
Overall Influence
1947 - 2006 (59 years)
Gail Ina Greenberg Shapiro was an American pediatric allergist based in Seattle. She was a faculty member at the University of Washington School of Medicine. In 2001, she became the first democratically elected president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology .
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Richard Steadman
#4808
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
J. Richard Steadman was an American orthopedic surgeon and founder of The Steadman Clinic and Steadman Philippon Research Institute located in Vail, Colorado. Steadman revolutionized orthopedic surgery. For a time, he was a clinical professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, but was known for his work in the area of microfracture surgery, and for treating injured sports stars from around the world. In January 2014, he announced his retirement from his surgical practice.
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Geoffrey C. Bowker
#58207
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. He moved to UCI at the start of 2012, having held the positions of Professor and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information. Prior to that, Bowker was Executive Director and Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor at the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. Previously, Bowker was chair of the Department of Communication at the University of California - San Diego and has held appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champa...
Go to Profile#14523
Rosalind Raine
#54800
Overall Influence
Rosalind Raine is a British applied health research scientist, public medicine doctor, professor of health care evaluation and the founding head of the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London .
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Christoph Hoerl
#166269
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Christoph Hoerl is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick where he is also Deputy Head of Department of Philosophy. He is known for his works on philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology.
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Rebecca Lee Crumpler
1831 - 1895 (64 years)
Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born Rebecca Davis, , was an American physician, nurse and author. After studying at the New England Female Medical College, in 1864 she became the first African American woman to become a doctor of medicine in the United States. Crumpler was also one of the first female physician authors in the nineteenth century. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings. Dedicated to nurses and mothers, it focuses on maternal and pediatric medical ...
Go to Profile#14526
Mukesh Jain
#135347
Overall Influence
Mukesh K. Jain is an American physician-scientist specializing in cardiovascular medicine. Since March 2022 he has served as Dean of Biological Sciences at Brown University and Dean of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School. Jain previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at University Hospitals Health System and Vice-Dean for Medical Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.
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Billy Bishop
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
Air Marshal William Avery Bishop, was a Canadian flying ace of the First World War. He was officially credited with 72 victories, making him the top Canadian and British Empire ace of the war, and also received a Victoria Cross. During the Second World War, Bishop was instrumental in setting up and promoting the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
Go to Profile#14528
Louis Mackey
#136246
Overall Influence
1926 - 2004 (78 years)
Louis Henry Mackey was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life Louis Henry Mackey was born in Sidney, Ohio in 1926. After earning a B.A. at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio he pursued graduate studies in philosophy, first at Duke University, and then Yale University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1954. His dissertation was titled The Nature and the End of the Ethical Life according to Kierkegaard.
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Adolf Kussmaul
1822 - 1902 (80 years)
Adolph Kußmaul was a German physician and a leading clinician of his time. He was born as the son and grandson of physicians at Graben near Karlsruhe and studied at Heidelberg. He entered the army after graduation and spent two years as an army surgeon. This was followed by a period as a general practitioner before he went to Würzburg to study for his doctorate under Virchow.
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John Unsworth
#50415
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Unsworth is the university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Virginia, a position he has held since June 25, 2016. Biography John Unsworth was born in 1958, in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Northampton High School in 1975, and attended Princeton University and Amherst College as an undergraduate, graduating from Amherst in 1981. He received a master's degree in English from Boston University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1988. His first faculty appointment was in English, at North Carolina State University, from 1989 to 1993.
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Carl W. Walter
#99971
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
Carl Waldemar Walter was a surgeon, inventor, and professor at Harvard Medical School. Walter has been called "a pioneer in the transfusion and storage of blood," credited with founding one of the world's first blood banks and invention of the first blood collection bag. He was also known for his prolific work in the advocacy, application, and study of asepsis.
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Olimpia Lombardi
#108226
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Olimpia Iris Lombardi is an Argentine philosopher of science whose research involves ontology in chemistry and in quantum mechanics, including the use of ontological pluralism to argue for treating chemistry as autonomous from, rather than subsidiary to, physics.
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Ron Burnett
#63961
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ron Burnett is an author, professor and the President Emeritus and Research Director for the new Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Education Burnett was born 24 May 1947 in London, England.
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Juliana Sokolová
#170177
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Juliana Sokolová is a Slovak writer, poet and philosopher. Early life Juliana Sokolová grew up in Košice and Misrata. She studied Philosophy at the University of York graduating in 2009. During her studies, she lived partly in the UK, partly in Kosovo and Sarajevo. Since 2010, she has taught Aesthetics at the Technical University of Košice.
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Saib Shawkat
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Saib Shawkat was an Iraqi doctor and politician who was an Arab nationalist leader in Iraq. Medical career He was from an upscale patriotic Baghdadian family of Georgian origin and studied at a medical school in Istanbul 1913-1918, completing post-graduate studies in general surgery in Germany. Shawkat was the first Iraqi doctor to teach anatomy at the Iraqi Royal College of Medicine of which he became the dean later in the 1940s. He was one of the pioneers in general surgery in Iraq, serving as Director General of Baghdad Hospital in the 1930s. In 1932 he became a founding committee member of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society.
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August Buchner
1591 - 1661 (70 years)
August Buchner was a German philologist, poet and literary scholar, an influential professor of poetry and rhetoric at the University of Wittenberg. Career Buchner was born in Dresden the son of Paul Buchner and his wife Maria, the daughter of the mayor of Dresden . After private education, he attended from 17 November 1604 the Landesschule Pforta, where he received education in religion, classical languages and the liberal arts. He studied at the University of Wittenberg from 19 November 1610, first law and philosophy. He studied poetry with and , ethics with , Greek with , and rhetoric w...
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Werner Bernreuther
#172798
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Werner Bernreuther is a German actor, singer-songwriter, writer, poet, translator and painter. Biography Bernreuther trained as an electrician, studied 1965–1969 at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Leipzig and was then committed to the stages Freiberg and Gera. Bernreuther received Chanson lessons from Heinrich Pohle and Fania Fénelon. At the 4th Chanson days of the GDR, he was awarded the prize of the Writers' Union of the German Democratic Republic. Bernreuther sings partly in his native Itzgründisch dialect and mixed "folk song-like structure with intellectual thinking." In the 1980s, he mad...
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Stanisław Parzymies
#60441
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Stanisław Edward Parzymies is a Polish international relations scholar, an expert on French-German relations. He is a former Chairman of the Scientific Board at the Institute of International Relations and the Head of the European Integration Section of the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw.
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Samuel O. Thier
#24608
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Samuel Osiah Thier was professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard University. He earned his medical degree at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1960. He previously served as the president of Brandeis University from 1991–1994 and the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1994-96.
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Carolyn Chute
#44260
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Carolyn Chute is an American writer and populist political activist who is strongly identified with the culture of poor, rural western Maine. Rod Dreher, writing in The American Conservative, has referred to Chute as "a Maine novelist and gun enthusiast who, along with her husband, lives an aggressively unorthodox life in the Yankee backwoods." She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award.
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Tony Vinson
#46810
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Tony Vinson was an Australian academic, regarded as "one of Australia's leading social scientists and outspoken public intellectuals". His career spanned the disciplines of social work, social policy, psychology, education, public administration and social research.
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James P. Kushner
#174306
Overall Influence
James P. Kushner is an American hematologist, currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Utah.
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Andreas Speer
#168881
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Andreas Speer is a German philosopher and professor. Since 2004 he is the director of the Thomas-Institut at the University of Cologne. Books Written Edited Die Bibliotheca Amploniana: Ihre Bedeutung im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?
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Frank Brennan
#32093
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Frank Tenison Brennan SJ AO is an Australian Jesuit priest, human rights lawyer and academic. He has a longstanding reputation of advocacy in the areas of law, social justice, refugee protection, reconciliation, and human rights activism.
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Giorgio Nataletti
1907 - 1972 (65 years)
Giorgio Nataletti was an Italian musicologist, the first director of the Ethnomusicological Archives at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. He was in charge of a vast project from 1948–72 to record traditional Italian music. It was done under the auspices of RAI, the Italian Radio and Television agency. The results are preserved in the RAI archives as well as those of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia.
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Mahmood Anjir-Faghnawi
1231 - 1317 (86 years)
#14547
John Nash
1893 - 1977 (84 years)
John Northcote Nash was a British painter of landscapes and still-lives, and a wood engraver and illustrator, particularly of botanic works. He was the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash. Early life Nash was born in London, the younger son of lawyer William Harry Nash who served as recorder of Abingdon and Caroline Maude Jackson. His mother came from a family with a naval tradition; she was mentally unstable and died in a mental asylum in 1910. In 1901 the family moved to Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. Nash was educated at Langley Place in Slough and afterwards at Wellington College, Berkshire.
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Max Schneider
1875 - 1967 (92 years)
Max Schneider was a German music historian. Life Born in Eisleben, Schneider studied musicology at the University of Leipzig with Hermann Kretzschmar and Hugo Riemann and composition with Salomon Jadassohn. After his time as second Kapellmeister in Halle from 1897 to 1901, he continued his studies of music history with Kretzschmar. In 1904, he moved to Berlin, where he worked from 1905 to 1915 as a "scientific assistant" at the Alte Bibliothek.
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Nan Bernstein Ratner
#54291
Overall Influence
Nan Bernstein Ratner is a professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ratner is a board-recognized specialist in child language disorders. Her primary areas of research are fluency development and disorder, psycholinguistics, and child language development. She has published numerous research articles, chapters, and edited texts, as well as co-authored textbooks in her areas of research.
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Jostein Gripsrud
#80977
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jostein Gripsrud is a Norwegian media scholar, and is Professor in Media Studies at the University of Bergen. Life and work Gripsrud completed his MA exam at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 1979 and started as lecturer in Norwegian language and literature at Stockholm University in 1980. He obtained his PhD at the University of Bergen in 1988 on two different dissertations on major mass movements in Norway and their relations with the medium of theatre 1890-1940. He started as the first scholar from the humanities in the then new field of media studies in 1984, as Research Associate, and was hired as an Associate Professor of media studies in 1988.
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